


You're Still A Supervillain So Long As You Have A Self-Destruct Button

by lobac



Category: Venom (Comics)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other, What-If, not as dark as it sounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 22:53:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18882883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobac/pseuds/lobac
Summary: In Amazing Spider-Man #333, the symbiote appears to die. Eddie swears to avenge it bare-handed, but before he gets the opportunity, it turns out to have survived and breaks him out of jail.What if... not that?





	You're Still A Supervillain So Long As You Have A Self-Destruct Button

After the mass breakout at Ryker’s, Eddie Brock wasn’t generally considered anything more than a name on a list. Unpredictable, a threat to the general populace, but no more so than any other thug. Certainly no longer the kind of threat a superhero couldn’t casually sweep up while on patrol. After all, he had owed all his superpowers, apart from a reality-bending sense of self-righteousness and physically intimidating eyebrows, to his suit, which had been thoroughly destroyed.

There was, however, still one detail that made him a matter of some concern to one particular person: Peter Parker, known only to a select few people - perhaps those most invested in his future existence - and Eddie Brock - perhaps the person most invested in his future nonexistence - as Spider-Man.

Eddie couldn’t hurt him, but he could, very easily, hurt his family. He was ruthless enough, Peter knew he couldn’t keep an eye on everyone 24/7, and while he was in the process of asking for police protection, trying to convince them of the importance of his case when so many violent criminals were running loose would certainly raise all kinds of awkward questions about why, exactly, he was after them specifically.

Worse than that, Eddie only hadn’t already spilled his secret because he wanted to avoid competition for his skull, and now that, surely, even he had to admit he’d never get to kill him himself, that psychological safeguard might be gone. If he could make a convincing case of his identity to any of his other enemies, well.

All that to say: Peter Parker was constantly on the lookout for Eddie Brock. In all likelihood, the opposite was also true. And as ever, Eddie made the latter clear before the former had any success.

It was a completely regular letter, but for the lack of a return address and the slightest hint of sewer aroma clinging to it. This, to be fair, would generally only narrow it down to about five different villains.

“MURDERER,” was the chosen form of address. Another big hint. The final nail in the coffin was probably the amount of synonyms for “rotten” the writer knew, and their eagerness to put them between the words “your” and “soul”.

The rest was fairly standard. Come to this place, at this time, alone, or else. They’d danced this dance before. “VENGEANCE,” the letter was signed, dramatically, leaving Peter to consider whether Eddie had taken up a new alias and whether that meant he’d found some other source of power. It was, after all, New York. Mystical artefacts and untested scientific marvels were peddled in the streets.

He couldn’t be too careful. At the same time, he couldn’t afford to miss a chance to make contact. In the end, he escorted his aunt and wife to the mall, told them to have themselves a girls’ day out, and gave some anonymous tips as to the possibility of premeditated criminal activity in the area. A public place, full of those innocents Eddie possibly, maybe still cared about, and heightened police and vigilante presence. It was the best he could do to prepare for the worst kind of trap.

He hugged Mary Jane long enough to have to play it off with an artful twirl.

Then he took off.

They were to meet a good ways from the city, in a cave, though not one that qualified as explorable, thereby attracting tourists. No, this one had more of an atmosphere of solitary doom. To ward it off, and also, to see, Peter was wearing a little yellow hard hat with a headlamp over his costume. He felt all kinds of silly about it, but that was the price to pay for spelunking responsibly.

“Hello?” he yelled into the cave, which descended fairly steeply. “Spider-Man is here,” he continued, “in a little yellow hard hat with a headlamp, and feeling all kinds of silly about it.” No answer. “Feeling very vulnerable, emotionally. Very open to an attack out of nowhere. Maybe this thing even impedes my spider-sense, who knows?”

He only felt sillier. All the same, the silliest thing would be to head inside, when the most obvious thing would be to trap him under tons of rubble. He looked around, unsure.

Then, finally, a voice. What could’ve been night vision goggles glinted in the distance.

“Parker.”

That was proof enough of who was speaking, he supposed. If he’d spread his secret, he’d likely have already felt the repercussions.

“Follow me.”

He sounded… calm. That was… encouraging? No, the other word. Terrifying. Possibly encouraging, still, maybe, maybe he’d let himself be talked to, now, now that he was free of the alien’s influence… At the bottom of a cave. Maybe they’d have some peaceful negotiations at the bottom of a cave.

“You sure you don’t want to come up here and talk? Less dank. Less likely to be haunted, too.”

“We talk in seclusion, or not at all.”

Peter sighed. Eddie’s presence was the best reassurance he could get, as far as retaining the ability to resurface went. Once they were remotely close to each other, there was no way he could manage to trap him without trapping himself.

Life was just one flimsy justification of a stupid decision after another.

He leapt forward.

He could, at least, sense no immediate danger. More than anything, the descent was outright awkward. It was extremely tempting to simply knock Eddie out right then and there and drag him back to jail, but then, well, they wouldn’t have even attempted to resolve the main problem, would they? Spider-Man’s home address wouldn’t make for good prison cafeteria gossip, would it?

 “So,” he said into the silence, not even properly echoing in the narrow tunnel, “where are we headed, exactly? Eddie? Old pal?”

“To your grave,” he said, matter-of-factly, as he scaled downwards, surprisingly swiftly. As far as Peter could tell, he was just a guy. A scary guy, still, he supposed that went deeper than his former second skin, but not the kind Spider-Man should have anything to fear from.

“Out for another isolated deathmatch, then?”

“I’m not like you,” he hissed, “I won’t let any third parties get involved.”

The falsehood of the statement swirled through his brain like a restless goldfish. More than that, though, it bothered him that he’d never known him as a man of such few words. Had that been… an effect of the symbiote? Villainous monologuing?

Overall, it must have taken them about fifteen minutes to reach the point Eddie wanted them to reach. It was a larger structure, suitably like an arena, though with a rather low ceiling. Eddie sat down at one end of it. Then, and only then, did Peter’s spider-sense begin to tingle.

“So,” Eddie said.

Peter was on edge, but it was to be expected that Eddie would be, too. Primed to launch some kind of attack. He was almost definitely armed. It didn’t mean it had to happen. They had to try to talk this out, somehow.

“So,” Peter echoed.

“You killed my other half.”

Peter visibly recoiled at that. Eddie was all about slinging baseless, fundamentally untrue accusations, but it took him a second to even think of what something so serious as murder could possibly be referring to.

“You mean the suit?”

“My  _other_.”

“Eddie…”

Certainly, it had been alive, and now it wasn’t. Certainly, it had been able to feel, and from there, one might have been able to feel for it. He still didn’t really get it, but he could try to meet him halfway.

“You know that wasn’t me.”

“It wouldn’t have happened,” Eddie said, the effort of restraint suddenly showing in his voice, “if not for you.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if- You! You attacked me!”

“And we wouldn’t have attacked you,” he growled, “without reason.”

“This again? Eddie, I really thought-” Peter struggled for words, crouching closer. “Those screwed up thought processes, I really thought you’d be able to let go of them! I thought, well, alien burrowed into the brain, who knows what kinds of crazy that does to a guy-”

“Do you know what’s particularly effective, as far as inducing all kinds of crazy goes? Feeling your partner die. Feeling their panic, and their pain, and their last attempt to reassure you that it’s better this way. All of it.”

Peter’s spider-sense was now buzzing persistently. He really needed to defuse the situation. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about everything that happened to you! But you can’t keep pinning it on me-”

“And you can’t keep escaping justice while claiming to deal it out.”

“Hrrgh,” Peter said, eloquently, and strangled the air in front of him. “Fine, then! Where do we go from here, huh? You know you can’t take me. You don’t want someone else to do it. You could just give it up, Eddie. You could try to get your life back!”

“You took it from me! Twice!”

“You expected me not to catch a serial killer? Because it might’ve hurt the feelings of the guy who reported on the wrong one? The guy who kept the name of his suspect to himself because he wanted to milk the story for all it was worth? That guy?”

“That guy is dead!” Eddie, finally, yelled, “That guy is dead, and you won’t acknowledge it as murder. My other is dead, and you won’t acknowledge it as murder! We’ve both been dead- for the longest, longest time- That’s what happens, when nothing’s ever good enough so long as you’re alive-”

Eddie inhaled, sharply. Peter had no idea what he was talking about, but he got the feeling it wasn’t just about him. He tried, one more time, to reach out, but Eddie only looked pained for a moment. Then he went empty, cold.

“Don’t worry, Peter. Your secret won’t leave this cave.”

Peter had been suppressing the alarm bells going off in his head, long enough for them to have, slowly, built to a crescendo. Now, finally, his body moved without thought, with bang after bang and a sound like rolling thunder, with webbing to stop an incoming avalanche of rocks, to try to fill the cracks in the ceiling, to fling himself in the way when it split, sharp and heavy into his spine, which, as always, served as the last load-bearing pillar. He only really returned to himself then, and he returned to a self screaming in pain and too panicked to be useful.

How, he thought. Why?

Eddie looked over at him as he trembled under the strain, grinning, ghastly, familiar, and for a moment, the pure rage at the sight of it brought him back to his senses.

“Explosives,” Eddie said, “not as hard to put together as you’d think, if you’re willing to put in the research.”

“‘M g’nna… kill… you…” Peter huffed, trying to speak in fragments short enough not to lose any tension in his body.

“Yeah,” Eddie replied, getting up and walking over to him, casual, confident, like he thought he’d won, like he thought this was winning, “Just as soon as you give out, you will.”

Peter groaned, whined, some kind of guttural noise, with sheer, mortal agony. There was no way out. No way to get away, no way to get out if he did. It was all too much. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten their first meeting. He’d underestimated his reaction to losing the symbiote. And just like that. Just like that.

Eddie’s bare fist hit him square across the jaw. The impact was, all other things considered, barely perceptible. It must’ve felt a lot worse for him, but he didn’t let it show, seemed, if anything, pleased about it as he examined his hand.

“That was for Venom,” he said, pulling back with his other arm, and, remarkably, still not pulling the punch, landing against the bridge of his nose. “That was for me,” he said, before trying to get him in the solar plexus when he might as well have been hitting a brick wall, “and you can probably guess who that one was for.”

Even if it didn’t matter much, physically, or because of that, maybe, it was humiliating to endure. The proverbial insult to injury. He could wipe the floor with him, he just couldn’t move. 

“Actually,” he said, “I think it deserves a couple more, don’t you? After all you’ve done to it? I think that’s what it would’ve wanted.” Another strike to the cheek. Eddie hissed, but persevered. “Really… What we would’ve wanted, would’ve been, teeth, to tear your throat out, and use your vocal cords, to floss with, but alas…” An uppercut. An audible crack, this time. At least Peter wasn’t suffering alone. “All I’ve… got to offer… Trained for this.”

Eddie went on, determined to wear him down, not unsuccessfully. Peter thought of Aunt May and MJ, probably having a strawberry sundae somewhere. Good for them, he thought. He’d been in mortal peril while fearing for their safety one too many times, so it was, really, a nice change of pace to feel every disc in his spine dislocating and his back muscles tearing as a grieving body builder worked his fists into chunky paste across his body because his dad probably didn’t hug him enough. It was all fine.

And maybe, maybe Eddie was right. Maybe this was the only way to really, truly keep his secret.

“Will you,” Eddie wheezed, having finally worn out his hands beyond their intended function, bloodied and broken and shaking with it, “will you give up already?!”

“Hrng,” Peter said, wondering, quite frankly, why he didn’t. It wasn’t like he had a plan.

But it wasn’t like he was like Eddie, either.

The latter laid down, breathing heavily, bleeding on the floor, letting bits of the ceiling rain down upon him. Peter was growing numb from the pain. He hoped he’d wrap all the way around to euphoric, soon, he was pretty sure that could happen.

“You don’t know,” Eddie said, “you don’t know what you did to it.”

Peter was, in all honesty, far past the point of caring.

“You don’t know how much you broke it. You thought it was a thing, so you treated it like a thing, and then you kept treating it like a thing, but one that failed even at being a thing, and it didn’t even… feel like it could be a person anymore.”

There were many kinds of suffering Peter could relate to, but this sounded an awful lot like nonsense. Eddie was completely out of it. The symbiote was the one who mislead him. He only ever defended himself.

“And it loved you,” Eddie continued. “Just for existing, it loved you so much.”

Silence, except for the ominous noises of a collapsing cave and a crumbling bone structure both.

“It loved you,” he repeated, “enough to die for you…”

Eddie’s breath caught in his throat.

“More than me…”

He blinked.

“It loved… you and… me…”

Peter, suddenly, felt incredibly grateful he hadn’t had the strength to interject. The power of talk therapy at its finest.

“Oh, god,” Eddie said.

“Hrk,” Peter replied.

“Oh, god,” Eddie said, with rising horror.

“HRK,” Peter affirmed, frantically.

Eddie rose to his knees. Looked around himself, wide-eyed, like he was only now realising what he’d done. Folded his hands in prayer, or tried to, forcing them together, teeth gritted in pain, very genuinely looking about to cry from this more than anything that came before. He silently moved his lips, for a time, then lowered his gaze and whispered, urgently, “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Hrk,” said Peter, who might as well spend his last moments like this.

“I didn’t mean you,” Eddie hissed, somehow having some bile left.

Peter, internally, took the last hrk back.

Eddie rose to his feet and turned around, examining the cracks in the wall, putting his hand up against them. There wasn’t much of anything he could do. There wasn’t much of anything anyone could do. 

There were more, louder cracking noises, now. Peter thought about how, maybe, it was ironic or something, that he’d been scared shitless of Venom all this time, and now half of him had finally done him in when he’d vastly underestimated the danger he posed, and when he seemed to regret it, ironic or something, but mostly he thought about how his left hand was going to come off soon.

The noises seemed to be coming closer. “Strange,” Eddie said, hoarse, “that it sounds like the cracks are spreading inwards from the outside, when all the detonations originated in…”

Darkness rose through the cracks.

It enveloped Eddie’s hand.

It expanded, like water freezing in hairlines in the asphalt, breaking it open, and the wall shattered, revealing a tunnel it had spread itself through as support.

It grabbed Eddie by the collar and slingshotted him outside.

Peter didn’t waste another second playing Atlas. He didn’t let himself think about it. He thwipped into the tunnel, masses of rock coming down around him instantly, dislocating his shoulder, tearing his costume and, not to mention, skin, as he pulled himself upwards and out - Entirely on his own.

So much for love. Honestly.

And somehow, he still hadn’t expected to meet daylight shooting out of the side of a cliff. He quickly flung his arm behind himself to web onto it, crashed against the side of it, and slowly, limply, slid downwards.

Eddie seemed to be having a much more comfortable time of it, though, to Peter’s credit, he was the one who was sobbing uncontrollably. Worse than he had when it died.

Well, “died”.

It had caught him in a net of sorts, leaving him dangling with his feet against the cliffside, and he’d buried his face in their hands, large and black and clawed, as he writhed about in it. Tendrils, one by one, encircled his legs and torso, slotting slowly, firmly, purposefully into place, like embrace after embrace, and its head materialised over his shoulder. He reached out to it, to- press his lips to it, all over, over and over again. Between the eyes, above the eyes, below the eyes. Even, it seemed, on the teeth. Desperately. And then, they just sort of… merged into each other, and there was Venom.

Peter did not have the energy to be grossed out. Or surprised, even.

They descended like nothing had ever happened, bold and upright and laughing, a seamless transition from the hysterical tears Eddie’d been reduced to, sounding only slightly deranged. "Once again,” they proclaimed, “we are whole. Once again, we survived. We see, now, that it only makes sense to take a stand against you when we are united in our cause. Alone, we are too weak to resist your machinations! To not let ourselves be turned back into victims!” They scowled. “Alone, the purity of our crusade can be… compromised by secondary motives.”

There, there was the gloating he’d missed. After they’d failed, too. Peter would go ahead and chalk it up to the symbiote, then. Or… Eddie. He seemed to have the energy for it, now that he wasn’t alone. He seemed… God, was he trying to impress it? It was, at that moment, the funniest thing he’d ever thought of, but his ribcage would probably collapse from the strain of laughing.

They drew towards him, distinctly predatory, but Peter would only try to move as a last resort. They were lost in quiet contemplation, or conversation, maybe, until, finally, the symbiote unspooled from Eddie’s arm, revealing intact fingers that had been broken in three places a minute before.

Peter hissed as it sank underneath his skin. “You have to ask,” he murmured, half joking, half despairing, and it halted.

He didn’t hear anything. The shape of the words

_Can I?_

just kind of appeared in his head. He wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it.

Eddie looked down at him, sternly.

“Oh,” he said, “please.”

It took to all of him, mending and soothing and healing, all the while connected to Eddie, leaving room for the slightest amount of mental spillover between them. Underneath it all, they both felt soft, and grateful, and relieved. Mostly, they were just tired. Peter wasn’t sure why he felt a sense of camaraderie about it, but he assumed that was the power of a mental bond. It had all been Eddie’s fault. Intentionally, even. His plot.

But they were tired, now.

When Peter no longer felt like he’d gone through the shredder, they receded. To say they seemed conflicted was an understatement. They circled him, low to the ground, growling ever so slightly.

“Your secret,” they eventually said, with that resonant voice of theirs, “is safe with us,” and before he could respond, they vanished like a skittish wildcat into the woods.

Peter just laid there.

He tore his little yellow hard hat off.

**Author's Note:**

> I genuinely have no idea how a cave-in works, and I wasn't about to do the research to disprove my own contrived scenario. This is just how they happen in this universe now. The laws of physics and geology have been rearranged in whatever manner necessary to make this feasible.


End file.
